MIMohammad Ilyas

Mohammad Ilyas

*This is an algorithmically generated author record based on publicly available information.

Current Organizations / Institutes

The organizations/institutes from the scholar's latest article


Mohammad Ilyas has a total of 22 co-authors. Here are the top co-authors by number of shared publications:


Latest Publications

  • Open Access

    ML-FSID-FIS: A Multi-Level Feature Selection and Fuzzy Inference System for Intrusion Detection in IoMT

    by Ghaida Balhareth, Mohammad Ilyas, Basmh Alkanjr

    The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is becoming a vital part of modern healthcare, enabling ongoing patient monitoring and remote diagnosis. However, as more devices connect to the internet, healthcare systems become more vulnerable to serious security issues such as unauthorized access, patient data manipulation, and Man-in-the-Middle attacks. Conventional Intrusion Detection Systems (IDSs) often struggle with the unclear and uncertain characteristics of IoMT traffic, which leads to reduced detection accuracy and increased false alarms. To address these challenges, this paper proposes ML-FSID-FIS, a multi-level feature selection-based Intrusion Detection System that employs a fuzzy inference system (FIS) for classification in IoMT networks. The model combines multiple feature selection techniques into a three-stage multi-level feature selection strategy to improve detection efficiency and strengthen the security of IoMT networks. In the first stage, four feature selection techniques—Random Forest, XGBoost, ReliefF, and Mutual Information—are applied to identify the most relevant features. In the second stage, a frequency-based consensus strategy is utilized to extract consistently selected features from the four top-ranked sets. In the third stage, an ensemble refinement using bagging-based ranking is employed to rank the remaining features, resulting in the selection of the top five features. From these, three candidate 3-feature groups are formed and evaluated, and the best-performing group is selected as the final input set for the fuzzy logic classifier. The FIS produces a continuous risk score that is mapped to a binary decision using a validation-selected threshold. When the proposed method was tested on the WUSTL-EHMS-2020 dataset and compared with other recent work using the same dataset, it showed strong detection performance while maintaining a very low false positive rate of 0.3%. This study is distinguished by its integrated design, which combines a three-stage multi-level feature selection strategy with fuzzy logic-based intrusion classification to improve feature efficiency and support interpretable intrusion detection in IoMT.


  • Open Access

    FedSMOTE-DP: Privacy-Aware Federated Ensemble Learning for Intrusion Detection in IoMT Networks

    by Theyab Alsolami, Mohammad Ilyas

    The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) transforms healthcare through interconnected medical devices but faces significant cybersecurity threats, particularly intrusion and exfiltration attacks. Centralized intrusion detection systems (IDSs) require data aggregation, presenting privacy and scalability risks. This paper proposes FedEnsemble-DP, a privacy-aware Federated Learning (FL) framework for decentralized intrusion detection in IoMT networks. The framework integrates three data balancing scenarios (Raw Imbalanced, Local SMOTE, Centralized SMOTE) with Differential Privacy (DP) and Secure Aggregation mechanisms. Extensive experiments on WUSTL-EHMS-2020 and CIC-IoMT-2024 datasets under non-IID settings (Dirichlet α = 0.3) demonstrate that models with strong privacy guarantees (ε = 3.0) frequently match or exceed non-private baselines. Key findings show Local SMOTE with ε = 3.0 achieved 94.60% accuracy and 0.9598 AUC, while Raw Imbalanced with ε = 3.0 attained 94.50% accuracy and 0.9494 AUC. Even with strict privacy (ε = 3.0), these results surpassed the non-private baseline (93.20% accuracy) in the raw scenario. Centralized SMOTE showed effectiveness but introduced training instability. These results indicate that local data balancing combined with calibrated DP noise can yield high detection performance while preserving privacy, effectively bridging security-performance and data confidentiality requirements in distributed healthcare networks.


  • Top Cited Papers
    Open Access

    Real-Time American Sign Language Interpretation Using Deep Learning and Keypoint Tracking

    by Bader Alsharif, Easa Alalwany, Ali Ibrahim, Imad Mahgoub, Mohammad Ilyas

    Communication barriers pose significant challenges for the Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing (DHH) community, limiting their access to essential services, social interactions, and professional opportunities. To bridge this gap, assistive technologies leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and deep learning have gained prominence. This study presents a real-time American Sign Language (ASL) interpretation system that integrates deep learning with keypoint tracking to enhance accessibility and foster inclusivity. By combining the YOLOv11 model for gesture recognition with MediaPipe for precise hand tracking, the system achieves high accuracy in identifying ASL alphabet letters in real time. The proposed approach addresses challenges such as gesture ambiguity, environmental variations, and computational efficiency. Additionally, this system enables users to spell out names and locations, further improving its practical applications. Experimental results demonstrate that the model attains a mean Average Precision (mAP@0.5) of 98.2%, with an inference speed optimized for real-world deployment. This research underscores the critical role of AI-driven assistive technologies in empowering the DHH community by enabling seamless communication and interaction.


  • Top Cited Papers
    Open Access

    Stacking Ensemble Deep Learning for Real-Time Intrusion Detection in IoMT Environments

    by Easa Alalwany, Bader Alsharif, Yazeed Alotaibi, Abdullah Alfahaid, Imad Mahgoub, Mohammad Ilyas

    The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is revolutionizing healthcare by enabling advanced patient care through interconnected medical devices and systems. However, its critical role and sensitive data make it a prime target for cyber threats, requiring the implementation of effective security solutions. This paper presents a novel intrusion detection system (IDS) specifically designed for IoMT networks. The proposed IDS leverages machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) techniques, employing a stacking ensemble method to enhance detection accuracy by integrating the strengths of multiple classifiers. To ensure real-time performance, the IDS is implemented within a Kappa Architecture framework, enabling continuous processing of IoMT data streams. The system effectively detects and classifies a wide range of cyberattacks, including ARP spoofing, DoS, Smurf, and Port Scan, achieving an outstanding detection accuracy of 0.991 in binary classification and 0.993 in multi-class classification. This research highlights the potential of combining advanced ML and DL methods with ensemble learning to address the unique cybersecurity challenges of IoMT systems, providing a reliable and scalable solution for safeguarding healthcare services.


  • Open Access

    Enhancing Cybersecurity in Healthcare: Evaluating Ensemble Learning Models for Intrusion Detection in the Internet of Medical Things

    by Theyab Alsolami, Bader Alsharif, Mohammad Ilyas

    This study investigates the efficacy of machine learning models for intrusion detection in the Internet of Medical Things, aiming to enhance cybersecurity defenses and protect sensitive healthcare data. The analysis focuses on evaluating the performance of ensemble learning algorithms, specifically Stacking, Bagging, and Boosting, using Random Forest and Support Vector Machines as base models on the WUSTL-EHMS-2020 dataset. Through a comprehensive examination of performance metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, and F1-score, Stacking demonstrates exceptional accuracy and reliability in detecting and classifying cyber attack incidents with an accuracy rate of 98.88%. Bagging is ranked second, with an accuracy rate of 97.83%, while Boosting yielded the lowest accuracy rate of 88.68%.


  • Open Access

    Optimized Intrusion Detection for IoMT Networks with Tree-Based Machine Learning and Filter-Based Feature Selection

    by Ghaida Balhareth, Mohammad Ilyas

    The Internet of Medical Things (IoMTs) is a network of connected medical equipment such as pacemakers, prosthetics, and smartwatches. Utilizing the IoMT-based system, a huge amount of data is generated, offering experts a valuable resource for tasks such as prediction, real-time monitoring, and diagnosis. To do so, the patient’s health data must be transferred to database storage for processing because of the limitations of the storage and computation capabilities of IoMT devices. Consequently, concerns regarding security and privacy can arise due to the limited control over the transmitted information and reliance on wireless transmission, which leaves the network vulnerable to several kinds of attacks. Motivated by this, in this study, we aim to build and improve an efficient intrusion detection system (IDS) for IoMT networks. The proposed IDS leverages tree-based machine learning classifiers combined with filter-based feature selection techniques to enhance detection accuracy and efficiency. The proposed model is used for monitoring and identifying unauthorized or malicious activities within medical devices and networks. To optimize performance and minimize computation costs, we utilize Mutual Information (MI) and XGBoost as filter-based feature selection methods. Then, to reduce the number of the chosen features selected, we apply a mathematical set (intersection) to extract the common features. The proposed method can detect intruders while data are being transferred, allowing for the accurate and efficient analysis of healthcare data at the network’s edge. The system’s performance is assessed using the CICIDS2017 dataset. We evaluate the proposed model in terms of accuracy, F1 score, recall, precision, true positive rate, and false positive rate. The proposed model achieves 98.79% accuracy and a low false alarm rate 0.007 FAR on the CICIDS2017 dataset according to the experimental results. While this study focuses on binary classification for intrusion detection, we are planning to build a multi-classification approach for future work which will be able to not only detect the attacks but also categorize them. Additionally, we will consider using our proposed feature selection technique for different ML classifiers and evaluate the model’s performance empirically in real-world IoMT scenarios.


  • Open Access

    Using Machine Learning Multiclass Classification Technique to Detect IoT Attacks in Real Time

    by Ahmed Alrefaei, Mohammad Ilyas

    This paper presents a real-time intrusion detection system (IDS) aimed at detecting the Internet of Things (IoT) attacks using multiclass classification models within the PySpark architecture. The research objective is to enhance detection accuracy while reducing the prediction time. Various machine learning algorithms are employed using the OneVsRest (OVR) technique. The proposed method utilizes the IoT-23 dataset, which consists of network traffic from smart home IoT devices, for model development. Data preprocessing techniques, such as data cleaning, transformation, scaling, and the synthetic minority oversampling technique (SMOTE), are applied to prepare the dataset. Additionally, feature selection methods are employed to identify the most relevant features for classification. The performance of the classifiers is evaluated using metrics such as accuracy, precision, recall, and F1 score. The results indicate that among the evaluated algorithms, extreme gradient boosting achieves a high accuracy of 98.89%, while random forest demonstrates the most efficient training and prediction times, with a prediction time of only 0.0311 s. The proposed method demonstrates high accuracy in real-time intrusion detection of IoT attacks, outperforming existing approaches.


  • Open Access

    Effective Feature Engineering Framework for Securing MQTT Protocol in IoT Environments

    by Abdulelah Al Hanif, Mohammad Ilyas

    The explosive growth of the domain of the Internet of things (IoT) network devices has resulted in unparalleled ease of productivity, convenience, and automation, with Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol being widely recognized as an essential communication standard in IoT environments. MQTT enables fast and lightweight communication between IoT devices to facilitate data exchange, but this flexibility also exposes MQTT to significant security vulnerabilities and challenges that demand highly robust security. This paper aims to enhance the detection efficiency of an MQTT traffic intrusion detection system (IDS). Our proposed approach includes the development of a binary balanced MQTT dataset with an effective feature engineering and machine learning framework to enhance the security of MQTT traffic. Our feature selection analysis and comparison demonstrates that selecting a 10-feature model provides the highest effectiveness, as it shows significant advantages in terms of constant accuracy and superior training and testing times across all models. The results of this study show that the framework has the capability to enhance the efficiency of an IDS for MQTT traffic, with more than 96% accuracy, precision, recall, F1-score, and ROC, and it outperformed the most recent study that used the same dataset.


  • Open Access

    An Ensemble-Based Multi-Classification Machine Learning Classifiers Approach to Detect Multiple Classes of Cyberbullying

    by Abdulkarim Faraj Alqahtani, Mohammad Ilyas

    The impact of communication through social media is currently considered a significant social issue. This issue can lead to inappropriate behavior using social media, which is referred to as cyberbullying. Automated systems are capable of efficiently identifying cyberbullying and performing sentiment analysis on social media platforms. This study focuses on enhancing a system to detect six types of cyberbullying tweets. Employing multi-classification algorithms on a cyberbullying dataset, our approach achieved high accuracy, particularly with the TF-IDF (bigram) feature extraction. Our experiment achieved high performance compared with that stated for previous experiments on the same dataset. Two ensemble machine learning methods, employing the N-gram with TF-IDF feature-extraction technique, demonstrated superior performance in classification. Three popular multi-classification algorithms: Decision Trees, Random Forest, and XGBoost, were combined into two varied ensemble methods separately. These ensemble classifiers demonstrated superior performance compared to traditional machine learning classifier models. The stacking classifier reached 90.71% accuracy and the voting classifier 90.44%. The results of the experiments showed that the framework can detect six different types of cyberbullying more efficiently, with an accuracy rate of 0.9071.


  • Top Cited Papers
    Open Access

    Deep Learning Technology to Recognize American Sign Language Alphabet

    by Bader Alsharif, Ali Salem Altaher, Ahmed Altaher, Mohammad Ilyas, Easa Alalwany

    Historically, individuals with hearing impairments have faced neglect, lacking the necessary tools to facilitate effective communication. However, advancements in modern technology have paved the way for the development of various tools and software aimed at improving the quality of life for hearing-disabled individuals. This research paper presents a comprehensive study employing five distinct deep learning models to recognize hand gestures for the American Sign Language (ASL) alphabet. The primary objective of this study was to leverage contemporary technology to bridge the communication gap between hearing-impaired individuals and individuals with no hearing impairment. The models utilized in this research include AlexNet, ConvNeXt, EfficientNet, ResNet-50, and VisionTransformer were trained and tested using an extensive dataset comprising over 87,000 images of the ASL alphabet hand gestures. Numerous experiments were conducted, involving modifications to the architectural design parameters of the models to obtain maximum recognition accuracy. The experimental results of our study revealed that ResNet-50 achieved an exceptional accuracy rate of 99.98%, the highest among all models. EfficientNet attained an accuracy rate of 99.95%, ConvNeXt achieved 99.51% accuracy, AlexNet attained 99.50% accuracy, while VisionTransformer yielded the lowest accuracy of 88.59%.